Sharon Jones reports
This week saw an U20 British Ranking Competition being held at Nottingham University's David Ross Sports Centre. Ed Howlett (back home for the weekend) and James Rutherford were competing on Saturday. Unfortunately they were drawn in the same poule and all the poules were difficult, as the competition was limited to the oldest three age group years up to U20. Ed won his poule fights 5-2, 5-1, 5-2, 4-1 and 5-4, the last being against the highest ranked fencer in that poule, Douggie Ashby (who is currently training full time). James won one fight 5-2 and also beat Ashby 5-4. He lost fights by a 2-5 and 3-5 margin and was very unfortunate to lose a third 4-5, due to a couple of very controversial refereeing decisions.
Ed was ranked 2nd after the poules and James 19th. He was unfortunate to meet the U20 silver medallist this year, Matthew Abrahams, in L32 and after a closely fought match went out 12-15, to finish 20th. Ed had a broadly fair draw given his ranking and beat Scottish fencer Dylan Roberts 15-3. He then beat Wales Junior fencer Harri Hayes 15-9. He fenced confidently and superbly to beat Fencers Club London's James Page 15-6 in L8, but fell to that club's Sebastian Pallier (the gold medallist) in L4.
The U20 women's foil on the Sunday was a fairly small competition, highly concentrated with very good fencers. Having had a small, but tough, poule, regular guest fencer Serena Patel went out in L16 to Bronwen Granville of Bath Sword.
The photo shows Ed 2nd left - it's notable that the other three fencers on the podium are currently training full time, while Ed is balancing training and university studies.
